South Africa to Get Key AIDS Drug

Published 2:13 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

A key AIDS drug, which reduces the chances of HIV-positive pregnant mothers transmitting the virus to their children at birth, is to be made available in South Africa's most AIDS stricken province, an official said Monday.

The decision to make the drug nevirapine available at public hospitals in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, which is controlled by the Zulu nationalist Inkatha Freedom Party, runs counter to a national health department directive restricting the drug's use to a few pilot sites.

Nevirapine is approved by the World Health Organization, and studies show it can reduce the rate of mother-to-child HIV infections by up to 50 percent. But the South African government maintains its safety remains unproven and inadequate structures are in place to administer it.

KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali said he took the decision to make nevirapine available on principle, because it was "a pregnant woman's prerogative to save her child from contracting the AIDS virus," the South African Press Association reported.

Government studies indicate more than one in three people in KwaZulu-Natal are HIV positive.

KwaZulu-Natal is the second provinces to make nevirapine available in public hospitals. In 2000 health officials began distributing the drug in the Western Cape, which was then controlled by the main opposition, the Democratic Alliance.

The African National Congress, which rules nationally, has since entered into an alliance which controls the Western Cape. It controls the country's other seven provinces outright.

Health budget allocations are controlled at provincial level.

Last year AIDS activists won a lawsuit forcing the government to make nevirapine available at hospitals countrywide, but the government is appealing the ruling.

Mtshali said his province had an obligation to supply AIDS drugs to pregnant mothers.

"A mother who is already afflicted by an incurable disease should not have to contend with a hopeless situation of her unborn child facing the same affliction if it can be prevented," he said.

An estimated 4.7 million South Africans _ one in nine _ is HIV positive, more than any other country in the world, and the government has come under fire for its haphazard approach toward combatting the disease.

President Thabo Mbeki has questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, saying poverty and malnutrition are also responsible for the epidemic's spread.